Chameleons: The Misuse of Theoretical Models in Finance and Economics

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Chameleons: The Misuse of Theoretical Models in Finance and Economics

Paul Pfleiderer

Stanford University

March 2014

Abstract

In this essay I discuss how theoretical models in finance and economics are used in ways

that make them “chameleons” and how chameleons devalue the intellectual currency and

muddy policy debates. A model becomes a chameleon when it is built on assumptions

with dubious connections to the real world but nevertheless has conclusions that are

uncritically (or not critically enough) applied to understanding our economy. Read more of this post

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S. Korea’s robot technology rapidly catching up with developed nations

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

S. Korea’s robot technology rapidly catching up with developed nations

Won Ho-sup

2014.03.27 17:51:14

South Korea jumped into research in robots about 30 years later than the US or Japan. Korea’s development of the first generation robots working in the manufacturing sector began as late as in 1990s. But the country’s robots, an achievement of many scientists, are evolving and rapidly catching up with those of developed countries.  Read more of this post

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Media: Old players may continue to rule but content will be king

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Media: Old players may continue to rule but content will be king

March 29, 2014

Madeleine Heffernan

With Australia’s media scene undergoing rapid change, here’s where it all might be headed.

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Newspapers, radio and television will be there, but they’ll be different and the companies that have long delivered their content might be gone. The Australian media a couple of years from now will be even more focused on fulfilling people’s desires for content any time, anywhere. Read more of this post

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Australia has ‘lost pioneering spirit’: outgoing BCA president

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Australia has ‘lost pioneering spirit’: outgoing BCA president

Published 28 March 2014 11:09

Michael Smith

The Business Council of Australia’s ­outgoing president, Tony Shepherd, warns the nation has become “boring and conservative” as it ­abandons its pioneering spirit and loses its competitive edge. Read more of this post

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Kathmandu outdoor clothing retailer bound for North America

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Kathmandu outdoor clothing retailer bound for North America

Published 25 March 2014 12:54, Updated 26 March 2014 10:55

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Sue Mitchell

Outdoor clothing retailer Kathmandu is eyeing the North American adventure wear market as part of an international expansion plan that promises to drive a new era of growth once its Australian and New Zealand business starts to mature. Read more of this post

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Franchisees trounce company-owned stores in major study, but McDonalds still wants both

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Michael Bailey Deputy editor

Franchisees trounce company-owned stores in major study, but McDonalds still wants both

Published 28 March 2014 12:46, Updated 28 March 2014 14:51

McDonalds maintains a mix of franchisee and company-owned clusters within metro areas, avoiding direct competition between two stores under different models wherever possible. Photo: Glenn Hunt Read more of this post

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Keen On. Scale: How To Spread Excellence From The Few To The Many

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Keen On… Scale: How To Spread Excellence From The Few To The Many

Posted 10 hours ago by Andrew Keen, Columnist

Bob Sutton is one of Silicon Valley’s most influential business gurus. A professor at Stanford’s Engineering School, he is the author of bestselling books like The No Asshole Ruleand Good Boss, Bad Boss.  And his latest book is Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More without Settling for Less, which argues that what distinguishes great companies like Pixar, Twitter, Google and Facebook from dysfunctional companies like Zynga is their ability to scale their organization. Read more of this post

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China’s New IPO Regime — Manipulation or Emancipation?

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

China’s New IPO Regime — Manipulation or Emancipation?

2014-02-24 18:05:39

Peter Fuhrman

Chairman and CEO China First Capital

In English we use the phrase ” bee in one’s bonnet” to explain someone with an obsession for a particular point of view. In Chinese, a similar idiom is 挥之不去, meaning you can’t wipe out the stain. Read more of this post

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CITIC Group to List in HK by Reversing into CITIC Pacific

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

CITIC Group to List in HK by Reversing into CITIC Pacific

03-27 15:19 Caijing

China’s state-owned conglomerate CITIC Group is planning to list in Hong Kong by reversing into its CITIC Pacific unit.

China’s state-owned conglomerate CITIC Group is planning to list in Hong Kong by reversing into its CITIC Pacific unit. Read more of this post

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How Yoox became the Amazon of the fashion world

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

How Yoox became the Amazon of the fashion world

Each year two million orders leave the hi-tech warehouses, destined for customers in more than 100 countries. Nick Compton visits the site’s Italian HQ

BY NICK COMPTON

MARCH 22, 2014 08:04

Federico Marchetti, the CEO of Yoox. His Proust Geometrica armchair by Cappellini is available from yoox.com

“I do think Yoox appeals to the fashion-savvy. They believe in their own personal style, they are connoisseurs” Read more of this post

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Taiwan will lose if trade pact not approved: central bank head

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Taiwan will lose if trade pact not approved: central bank head

CNA

image001-24

2014-03-29

Perng Fai-nan speaks at the association council meeting. Mar. 27. (Photo/Yen Chien-lung) Read more of this post

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Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future: China’s history is not a thing of the past and eminent historian Jonathan Spence explains why

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

03.28.2014 18:37

Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future

China’s history is not a thing of the past and eminent historian Jonathan Spence explains why

By staff reporters Huang Shan and Long Zhouyuan Read more of this post

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Property firms increase bank investments over liquidity concerns in China

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Property firms increase bank investments over liquidity concerns in China

Staff Reporter

2014-03-28

More Chinese property companies have been investing in banks since late last year, with more than 30 property firms getting involved in the banking industry including China Vanke and Evergrande Group, due to their concerns over liquidity risks, the Shenzhen-based Securities Times reports. Read more of this post

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Make whey: Mengniu benefits from Fonterra’s decline in China

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Make whey: Mengniu benefits from Fonterra’s decline in China

Staff Reporter

2014-03-29

New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra Co-operative Group has seen declining profits after botulism-causing bacteria was discovered in its products, while China Mengniu Dairy Company has reported rising revenue because of price hikes and acquisitions, Shanghai’s National Business Daily reports. Read more of this post

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Alibaba will launch a fund that allows customers to invest in entertainment products as part of its bid to expand into innovative finance

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Alibaba introduces crowdfunding entertainment product

Staff Reporter

image001-23

2014-03-29

A smartphone user in Fuzhou checks out the Yulebao platform, March 27. (Photo/CNS)

China’s Alibaba Group Holding, the world’s biggest e-commerce company, announced on March 27 that it will launch a fund that allows customers to invest in entertainment products as part of its bid to expand into innovative finance. Read more of this post

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Dancing Giants: Startup guru Steve Blank bashes big companies that stack the deck

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Dancing Giants: Startup guru Steve Blank bashes big companies that stack the deck

BY ADAM L. PENENBERG 
ON MCH 28, 2014

Steve Blank is a kind of folk hero in startup circles. A successful entrepreneur, Blank, though his writings and Lean LaunchPad seminars at Stanford and online — more than 150,000 students have taken it – has become kind of a startup guru whose aim is to take the guesswork out of product development. Most companies don’t fail because they couldn’t attract a management team or gin up a product, he says. They fail because they didn’t create a product that will sell. Both he and Eric Ries, a former student, have become synonymous with the lean startup methodology that provides a systematic approach to creating startups. Read more of this post

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Lemnos Labs have gone from being laughed out of the room, to establishing a $20 million hardware fund

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Lemnos Labs have gone from being laughed out of the room, to establishing a $20 million hardware fund

BY JAMES ROBINSON 
ON MARCH 28, 2014

Jeremy Conrad wants Lemnos Labs, the hardware incubator he co-founded and which this week turned into its own VC fund, to eliminate a false choice he sees plaguing entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. “There’s a real tragedy for me in seeing great mechanical people feeling like they have to choose between that and becoming a software engineer,” he says. Read more of this post

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BlackBerry Ltd’s ‘New Coke’ moment: John Chen hones in on company’s old, but beloved, tech recipe

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

BlackBerry Ltd’s ‘New Coke’ moment: John Chen hones in on company’s old, but beloved, tech recipe

Matt Hartley | March 28, 2014 7:10 PM ET

WATERLOO, ONT. • John Chen is navigating something of a “New Coke” moment.

When BlackBerry Ltd.’s previous management team unveiled the BlackBerry 10 operating system in January of last year alongside a pair of new, redesigned smartphones, it represented a monumental shift for the Waterloo, Ont.-based company. Read more of this post

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The End of Chinese Central Planning

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

STEPHEN S. ROACH

MAR 27, 2014

The End of Chinese Central Planning

BEIJING – “Isn’t it now time for China to abandon the concept of a growth target?”

That was the question I asked Chinese Finance Minister Lou Jiwei this week at the 15th annual China Development Forum, which brings together top Chinese officials and an international delegation of academics, leaders of multilateral organizations, and business executives. Having attended the CDF since former Premier Zhu Rongji initiated it in 2000, I can attest to its role as one of China’s most important platforms for debate. Zhu welcomed the exchange of views at the Forum as a true intellectual test for China’s reformers. Read more of this post

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Citigroup hurt by negligent auditing on failed stress test: Financial Times

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Citigroup hurt by negligent auditing on failed stress test: Financial Times

Fri, Mar 28 2014

(Reuters) – Weaknesses in auditing led to Citigroup Inc failing the U.S. Federal Reserve capital assessments, fueling fears that there is negligence in controls at the U.S. bank, the Financial Times reported on Friday citing executives and others sources familiar with the matter. Read more of this post

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CEOs: Own the Crisis or It Will Own You

April 11, 2014 1 Comment

CEOs: Own the Crisis or It Will Own You

by Lauren Leader-Chivée  |   2:58 PM March 26, 2014

The terrible press for GM keeps coming. The New York Times reported this week that GM lied to grieving families about the reasons for their loved ones’ deaths and even aggressively threatened families should they sue the company. This comes on top of recent revelations that GM officials knew about the faulty and deadly ignition switch issue in the Chevy Cobalt for years before recalling the cars. All this hits only months into Mary Barra’s tenure as CEO. While GM’s crisis is dramatic and specific, the crisis and the way Barra is handling it offer a broad array of lessons and a fair dose of controversy about what good leadership looks like and how some in the media judge male and female leaders differently. Read more of this post

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Midsize Companies Must Prioritize Ruthlessly

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Midsize Companies Must Prioritize Ruthlessly

by Robert Sher  |   8:00 AM March 27, 2014

The world is littered with the hollowed-out shells of firms that tried to do too much and spent too big trying to grow too fast. Many of those firms were midsize companies; they didn’t have the resources of the big firms to sustain setbacks, nor were they scrappy like most small companies, making do with the resources they had. Read more of this post

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Where to Find Authentic Entrepreneurs

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Where to Find Authentic Entrepreneurs

by William Barnett  |   1:00 PM March 27, 2014

I still remember when Steve Jobs was featured in business school case studies as an example of bad leadership style. At the time, Apple was a less-than-successful computer company, and Steve – ever the loner – had moved on to create Next, another less-than-successful one. When things go poorly for a nonconformist, how easy it is to call them the fool. But on those rare occasions when the loner gets it right – see Jobs a few years later when he returned to Apple – he does so in a big way. Nothing pays off so well as a nonconformist strategy that wins. Read more of this post

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On Tuesday, April 1, people in some provinces will be able to watch digital television for the first time in the Thai Kingdom’s history

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

The arrival of digital TV will be a game-changer across the board

Pradon Sirakovit
Special to The Nation March 29, 2014 1:00 am

On Tuesday, April 1, people in some provinces will be able to watch digital television for the first time in the Kingdom’s history. Read more of this post

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Mapping the future: Jack Dangermond, founder of Esri, the market leader in geographic info systems, says passion and good old-fashioned business values are behind

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

PUBLISHED MARCH 29, 2014

Mapping the future

Jack Dangermond, founder of Esri, the market leader in geographic info systems, says passion and good old-fashioned business values are behind By Anna Teo

image001-20 Read more of this post

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Singapore has many key attributes that few others can speak of: PM

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

PUBLISHED MARCH 29, 2014

Singapore has many key attributes that few others can speak of: PM

The Republic has a First World system in a complicated part of the world

LEE U-WEN

WHEN asked during a dialogue to describe Singapore’s USP – or unique selling point – to the world, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong described the country as having many key attributes that few others can speak of – PHOTO: ST Read more of this post

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Indonesia’s Population Boom Unsustainable, Experts Warn

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Indonesia’s Population Boom Unsustainable, Experts Warn

By Josua Gantan on 09:21 pm Mar 27, 2014

  1.  When the National Population and Family Planning Board, or BKKBN, held its annual meeting on Monday, there was a palpable tension in the room.

Read more of this post

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Bamboo-Munching Giant Panda Also Has a Sweet Tooth

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Bamboo-Munching Giant Panda Also Has a Sweet Tooth

By Will Dunham on 12:36 pm Mar 28, 2014

  1.  Giant pandas eat plenty of veggies, but apparently they like dessert, too.

Scientists studying the endangered black-and-white bears said on Thursday that while pandas almost exclusively eat bamboo, which contains only tiny amounts of sugars, they showed a strong preference for natural sweeteners in an experiment. Read more of this post

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Indonesia Presidential Election May Not Answer Investors’ Prayers

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Indonesia Presidential Election May Not Answer Investors’ Prayers

By Andy Mukherjee on 12:24 pm Mar 28, 2014

  1.  The 10 percent jump in Indonesia’s stock market this year is a case of investors’ hopes triumphing over experience.

Read more of this post

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Amid Social Media Push, Television Is Still the King in Indonesia

April 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Amid Social Media Push, Television Is Still the King

By Kennial Caroline Laia on 11:40 am Mar 29, 2014

  1.  Indonesians have long been famous for their embrace of social media platforms — Jakarta was last year identified as the Twitter capital of the world, and Indonesia is the fourth most active country on Facebook.

Read more of this post

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